Flavour Challenge: Pilgrimage to Mecca

Immaculate

unerring
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Flavour challenge

I’ve followed with considerable interest some of the succession games and challenges posted on these boards for some time and it seemed to me that there was one thing often (though not always) missing. In my opinion, we need a flavours challenge. Many games I have followed were very stylish and had a certain indescribable appeal (SGOTM2 probably the most of any) that made them very interesting reads. In the spirit of capturing that appeal, I'm introducing the flavours challenge. I would like to focus on making games that are aiming for that certain ‘je ne sais pas’.

The flavours challenge would consist of players (or groups of players) attempting to outdo each other (or at least compare notes in relation to) one particular goal. This goal would be the flavour of the game. This goal does not consists of highest score, earliest finish, or anything of that genre. A flavourful game should include style, aesthetic appeal, and a focus on that particular game’s chosen flavour.

The first challenge is based on a the 'Pilgrimage to Mecca'
I have recently played a game as Saladin of the Arabs (and am currently at year 5AD) at Monarch difficulty on a Pangea map. All settings are standard with the exception of game speed which is epic. I have chosen for the flavour of this game to focus on founding multiple religions in my capital. In my particular game I was able to establish five religions in my capital. I am now at a point where I must expand after having sacrificed early settling and conquering. Your goal is to establish multiple shrines, make the most productive use of them and overcome the lack of an early land grab to achieve a stylish and aesthetically appealing victory.

Goal: Establish Mecca as THE religious pilgrimage capital of the world. Emerge victorious. Do it all with style and maybe even show off your tricks a little bit.

Here is a screenshot of the settings, the starting location and a link to the starting save. I hope that others will also attempt this ‘flavours challenge’ and that we can afterwards compare notes.




http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/26373/AutoSave_Initial_BC-4000.Civ4SavedGame

A link to my write-up can be found here.
 
It's ‘je ne sais quoi’.

Other than that the challenge looks interesting and I might try it. I'll post later.
 
Well, I don't know if I'm in a winnable position or not, but playing on my first attempt I achieved a religion monopoly in 640AD (I made a stupid mistake in my calculations, because of my unfamiliarity with one particular nuance of the tech tree - the monopoly was available as of 80AD, as I demonstrated to myself on a replay).

The religious monopoly has some real problems looking forward, though. I played it as OCC - as of this point I have no resources (because hooking them up risks allowing a religion to spread: the useful bits would connect me to the river), which puts something of a damper on trade relationships and so on. In particular, I'm really cramped on health resources, having chopped forests to score the Oracle.
 
Spoiler :

3970BC: Jerusalem built on the eastern hill
3550BC: Buddhism (self-research)
3100BC: Hinduism (self-research)
2350BC: Stonehenge
2200BC: Judaism (self-research)
1420BC: Confucianism (oracle)
1330BC: Christianity (prophet)
760BC: Mathematics (self-research)
760BC: Philosophy (scientist)
730BC: Mecca built
85BC: Islam founded in Mecca (2 prophets)

Within a few turns the entire world converted, the rest of the game was a beeline for Mass Media.

1768AD: United Nations
1782AD: Pass the Universal Suffrage resolution to cancel Victoria's favorite civic bonus
1790AD: Diplomatic Victory

In the end 99% of the world was Muslim. The other 1% were stuck in Jerusalem with no trade routes.


 
Very pretty.

Is there a way to make the Hindu grab less of a crap shoot? While I managed it without a problem on my first attempt, subsequent trials have been falling about 4 turns short, which seems like more commerce than I can hope to make up in tile micromanagement.

Spoiler :
Maybe if I declare war on Asoka?
 
DaveMcW said:
Spoiler :

3970BC: Jerusalem built on the eastern hill
3550BC: Buddhism (self-research)
3100BC: Hinduism (self-research)
2350BC: Stonehenge
2200BC: Judaism (self-research)
1420BC: Confucianism (oracle)
1330BC: Christianity (prophet)
760BC: Mathematics (self-research)
760BC: Philosophy (scientist)
730BC: Mecca built
85BC: Islam founded in Mecca (2 prophets)

Within a few turns the entire world converted, the rest of the game was a beeline for Mass Media.

1768AD: United Nations
1782AD: Pass the Universal Suffrage resolution to cancel Victoria's favorite civic bonus
1790AD: Diplomatic Victory

In the end 99% of the world was Muslim. The other 1% were stuck in Jerusalem with no trade routes.



Wow!
that's impressive!
 
Spoiler :
As far as I can tell, Hindu is a total crapshoot. Given Asoka's start, he's going to take Fishing off the bat more often than not, and if he goes for Hindu next (likely, I recall that he has a flavor bias that direction), then I think the monopoly is blown.

Declaring war on him doesn't seem to make a difference.

My first attempt, which I never managed to reproduce, popped Fishing from the initial hut - I may have managed it by out teching Asoka?
 
DaveMcW said:
Spoiler :

3970BC: Jerusalem built on the eastern hill
3550BC: Buddhism (self-research)
3100BC: Hinduism (self-research)
2350BC: Stonehenge
2200BC: Judaism (self-research)
1420BC: Confucianism (oracle)
1330BC: Christianity (prophet)
760BC: Mathematics (self-research)
760BC: Philosophy (scientist)
730BC: Mecca built
85BC: Islam founded in Mecca (2 prophets)

Within a few turns the entire world converted, the rest of the game was a beeline for Mass Media.

1768AD: United Nations
1782AD: Pass the Universal Suffrage resolution to cancel Victoria's favorite civic bonus
1790AD: Diplomatic Victory

In the end 99% of the world was Muslim. The other 1% were stuck in Jerusalem with no trade routes.



Wow. That is impressive. My question is how you managed to self-research both meditation and polytheism before either Asoka or Monty. I thought i was being clever by using the wines to hurry research along a little bit, but that wasn't an option for Jerusalem.
 
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